In Latin America, where elections are usually something less than expressions of the popular will, it is significant that in Chile one of the most decisive political decisions was resolved at the ballot box. Of two-and-a-half million votes cast, Eduardo Frei, the Christian Democratic candidate, received 56%. The Socialist-Communist coalition candidate, Salvador Allende, received 39%, while Julio Duran, the candidate of the former foremost electoral party, the Radical Party, received slightly less than 5 %. With the exception of the usual bribery charges and the emphasizing of the fact that illiterates who compose 25% of the population (and who are mostly lower class) are excluded from voting, even the Communist daily El Siglo editorially commented that Frei won the popular mandate. This was both a personal triumph for Frei and a political vindication for the Christian Democratic Party which began in the late thirties as a split-off from the old traditional Catholic Conservative Party.